02/03/2014
Jones’s latest (after The Uninvited Guests) follows the career of Luke Kanowski, who leaves behind his dysfunctional family in Northern England and moves to London in the late 1960s to pursue a career as a playwright. He is soon befriended by aspiring producer Paul Driscoll and Paul’s girlfriend, Leigh Radley; together, the three start a small theater company called Graft. The trio’s fulfilling artistic life together gradually comes under the strain of Luke’s compulsive womanizing and Leigh’s unrequited attraction to him. Their rocky triangle is further threatened by Nina Jacobs, who has been groomed by her mother, a failed actress, for a life on the stage; Luke becomes obsessed with Nina’s melancholy beauty, but her marriage to an abusive theater producer, Tony, complicates their romance. As Luke and Nina embark on a torrid love affair, Luke finds success on his own as a playwright and is forced to choose between his hard-to-please beloved and the friends who have nursed his ambitions. An engrossing melodrama of theater life, the novel’s only drawback is Jones’s tendency toward precious turns of phrase. Her talent emerges most in the absorbing plot, which convincingly shows how friends can be torn apart by lust and ambition. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Gernert Company. (May)
Fallout: A Novel
Narrated by Steve West
Sadie JonesUnabridged — 13 hours, 13 minutes
Fallout: A Novel
Narrated by Steve West
Sadie JonesUnabridged — 13 hours, 13 minutes
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Overview
Sadie Jones, the award winning, bestselling author of The Uninvited Guests and The Outcast, explores the theater of love, the politics of theater, and the love of writing in this deeply romantic story about a young playwright in 1970s London.
Leaving behind an emotionally disastrous childhood in a provincial northern town, budding playwright Luke Kanowski begins a new life in London that includes Paul Driscoll, an aspiring producer who will become his best friend, and Leigh Radley, Paul's girlfriend. Talented and ambitious, the trio found a small theater company that enjoys unexpected early success. Then, one fateful evening, Luke meets Nina Jacobs, a dynamic and emotionally damaged actress he cannot forget, even after she drifts into a marriage with a manipulative theater producer.
As Luke becomes a highly sought after playwright, he stumbles in love, caught in two triangles where love requited and unrequited, friendship, and art will clash with terrible consequences for all involved.
Fallout is an elegantly crafted novel whose characters struggle to escape the various cataclysms of their respective pasts. Falling in love convinces us we are the pawns of the gods; Fallout brings us firmly into the psyche of romantic love-its sickness and its ecstasy.
Editorial Reviews
The strength of Fallout is the insistent thread of hope that runs through all the humiliation and bad behavior. The result is…a fuller, more emotionally satisfying story.
Emotionally charged.
On a par with the Barneses and McEwans of this parish… Jones’s gift - like all great writers - is to leave us wanting so desperately to believe that the story will continue without us once the scenery has been cleared away.
An intoxicating and immersive read... It is a fraught and compelling novel; one that replays itself uncomfortably in the mind long after it is finished.
Beautifully written... An intense and absorbing story.
An intoxicating, deeply romantic novel of theater, love, and friendship…With both microscopic precision and operatic emotions, Sadie Jones perfectly captures the exhilaration of the young and the talented as they find their footing in both art and love.
Jones is unflinching as she plots the course of fallout with no shelter, of wounded lives undone by desperation in love and art.
The novel is at its best when the characters quietly seek an audience for their pleasures, their pains, and the ‘more permanent wounds of their longer lives waiting, undiscovered.’
[A] wonderful read. Surprising depth of character, accidents of fate that feel like life, and emotional FALLOUT that heralds new maturity, make this a very satisfying novel.
An intelligent, pacy tale of pretty, talented people, striving for recognition but held back by their past…. Every summer needs a One Day-style read; this book is a contender for that crown.
Jones highlights beautifully the energetic, naive, cheap red-wine fug of the Seventies start-up, and its decadent antithesis, the emptiness of fatally compromised success.
Sadie Jones has an unerring ability to delve into the depths of characters and reveal both their strengths and their weaknesses.
Fallout is both deliciously gobble-able and carefully constructed.
An enthralling tale of lust, ambition and friendship.
This absorbing and romantic novel about love, art and the importance of being true to yourself will draw you in and keep you there until the very last page.
[Fallout] cements her reputation as a writer in the style of William Boyd; able to take on a variety of styles and mould them to her own voice.
The novel is at its best when the characters quietly seek an audience for their pleasures, their pains, and the ‘more permanent wounds of their longer lives waiting, undiscovered.’
[Fallout] cements her reputation as a writer in the style of William Boyd; able to take on a variety of styles and mould them to her own voice.
Jones is unflinching as she plots the course of fallout with no shelter, of wounded lives undone by desperation in love and art.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173661302 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 04/29/2014 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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